Performing Identity: The Relationship between Identity and Performance in Literature, Theatre and the Performing Arts

As part of the Fourth International Conference ‘Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities’ organized by Euroacademia in Venice, Italy on 4th and 5th of March 2016

Panel Proposed by: Dr. Panayiota Chrysochou, The University of Cyprus

Panel Description:
Identity is often seen as being a controversial topic. Whether it is fictive or real, (de)politicized and/or aesthetic, gendered or engendered, identity is often seen as being a powerful political tool and an essentially social construct. It also allows individuals to define themselves. In a sense, we perform our own identities everyday - or, perhaps, we perform a wide range of different identities at any one time. We implicitly live in a society which constructs various definitive identifications, and which often sees the rigid maintenance of hierarchical systems and exclusive ideological constructions of gender, identity and sexuality, or what Judith Butler defines in her work Bodies that Matter as an 'exclusionary matrix.' This has often resulted in the displacement of any discursive systems which resist these exclusionary systems. This panel seeks to give voice to discursive systems which have so often been displaced by exclusionary systems of identification. The main exclusionary focus in culture and the arts has often been on the white, heterosexual and supremacist male (or female). To rectify this oversight, this panel seeks to address any works of art and culture which are directly and explicitly related to the performance of identity from a different standpoint - that is, one which is not exclusively heteronormative and heterosexual.

We welcome any papers which focus on the following topics:

1. Identity as a performative and political tool and/or as a site of political resistance and change
2. The work of gay/lesbian or drag performance artists who do not form part of the white, male/female and heterosexual/heteronormative matrix
3. Identity as a fluid and shifting construct in the theatre, the performing arts and literature generally
4. Cultural and literary works or works of art which resist fixed identifications and engender performative meanings/ways of 'reading'
5. The abject as a site of identification
6. Gender and identity formation
7. Sexuality as a performative and identificatory construct or mode of identification.

If interested in participating, please read the complete details on the conference website and apply on-line or send a maximum 300 words abstract together with the details of your affiliation until 15th of January 2016 at applicationeuroacademia.eu

For full details of the conference and on-line application please see:
http://euroacademia.eu/conference/identities-and-identifications-fourth-edition/